We want you to be aware of some updates and important recommendations that will ensure your success with BMC Remedy version 9.1. BMC Software encourages you to review these recommendations and put these updates in place as quickly as possible.

For the latest news about upgrading to Remedy 9, check out the Featured Content section in the Remedy AR System community for articles and discussions about upgrade basics, technical considerations, recommended configuration, fixes, and patches.

Best regards,John WeigandR&D Program Manager, BMC Software

Message was edited by: Mark Walters
Updated AR Server hotfix link to point to a directory one level up as there is now a 9.1.02 hotfix line

Unfortunately I don't agree with step2 at the moment. We've done it (8/2016 Hotifx at patch 001) and after installation SRM can't create backend tickets. The corrected date funktions in ARS HF seems buggy, SRM tries to create tickets with date information 1/1/1970 instead of the real dates. Maybe a problem only with german date formats, but an fatal issue for such a big and important HF and library date changes.

With patch 001 only, all works fine! Newer is not always better, do not blindly trust!

Currently we discuss it with BMC support, but this takes time as you know.

We see a trend of BMC asking to install cumulative packages of hot-fixes for any kind of issue detected. However hot-fixes never should be installed if not needed to solve a critical issue. As hot-fixes normally are developed quickly and outside normal development and testing processes, the risk to apply hot-fixes in a production environment is to high for non critical issues.

I fully agree with Stefan and Jan. In my opinion, step 2 should only recommended IF you have enough time to re-do all your UAT testing (including system stability tests) on a QA environment which contains those hotfixes.

We just barely survived a huge upgrade from 7.6.04 SP5 to 9.1 SP1 (many hotfixes installed). The vast majority of our go live issues were not present during our UAT which was completed successfully on 9.1 SP1 (no hotfixes). As soon as we installed the absolutel latest hotfixes in PROD during go live cutover (as per BMC strong recommendations which we received), we started having all kinds of issues during our first go live week, with many functionalities now broken (and I mean MANY) which were extensively tested successfully before the hotfixes were applied.

I can say that I will never go for hotfixes again like that.

I will only agree to a hotfix install to fix a VERY specific issue in a CRITICAL situation with no workaround possible.

This was like trying to cure a cold we didn't know we had and then getting a life threating pneumonia in the process.

We are in the process of upgrading from ITSM 8.1 to ITSM 9.1. This is an upgrade in place using Windows, Oracle and Tomcat. Our UAT environment is very straight forward: 3 app hosts, Server Grouped, and three web hosts, all behind load balancers. Running the upgrade against non Server Grouped environments went well enough with only a few minor issues; items not documented that tool support calls to correct.

However, the upgrade of UAT has not gone well. Getting the installers just to run was a challenge because of Server Grouping, we think. Took several support calls to BMC to find the hidden settings needed to allow the installers to work. The installers finished with no errors but we have been struggling to get all three servers running sharing processes. There are so many changes that are not clearly documented, makes debugging the issue very difficult.

We have been working with BMC for almost two weeks and still do not have a working UAT environment. Sometimes one of the app servers won't even start and if it does it will stop responding for no apparent reason. The failing over of process is not working and FTS and approval will not run; log files are full of Java errors that are totally cryptic.

Wondering if any one has successfully upgrade from 8.1 to 9.1 using server grouping?

you mean 9.1.00 Patch 001 instead of SP1, right? As I remember SP1 don't exist for ARS / Core. Can you post the defect number so we can ask for the hotfix you mentioned. The official ARS HF (Aug. 2016) is too buggy to install as is.

Thank you for posting. Just concerned around these "hidden settings" that need to be done for the installation to work successfully. Would you be willing to share what settings were changed or will BMC be updating their online documentation to include these steps?

The following is a list of issues we ran into after upgrading from ITSM 8.1 to ITSM 9.1:

Java ARDBC LDAP Plugin issues: with the introduction of the Centralized Configuration module ARDBC connections were no longer showing; a new ar.cfg parameter "Configuration-name" was introduced and the server values needs to match the underlying server name, with the same case.

Vendor form issues using Java ARDBC LDAP. Queries were not being correctly formatted. a hotfix was provided.

The Remedy license keys were no longer valid after the upgrade. This happened in 3 environments; same license keys we've had for years on the app VMs no longer worked. BMC did not have a reason/solution.

TCP ports 61617 and 40001 needed to be opened in the firewall rules for Server Grouping.

Several SYS:Notification Messages records we customized were overwritten by the upgrade.

RKM status transition records we modified were overwritten by the upgrade.

RKM SYS:PredefinedQueries we modified were overwritten by the upgrade.

RKM Relevancy Boost increments we updated were overwritten by the upgrade.

RKM Problem Solution data source we disabled was enabled during the upgrade.

We have spent that last 2+ weeks trying to get Server Grouping working (3 ARS servers). We have applied 3 ARS hotfixes and none of them have worked. We think the Server Grouping issue is preventing one of the ARS servers from starting. Next step is to restore the environment and retry the upgrade.

ditto on the LDAP ARDBC issues, same here. We also had a lot of challenges in the CMDB area, since we used Assetlifecycle status in Reconjobs, and since that attribute is no longer available on the CMDB forms as such (moved to AST:Attributes), we had to redesign a bit those jobs.

We had similar bumps to get the server group 100% correctly (which it is now). We have 2 integration servers (one being the admin server) and 3 end user servers. In our case, after quite a few hectic days of not being able to get the server group working, even after installing hotfixes and having assistance from BMC 3rd level teams, we went back to the basics and it was what fixed it for us:

- we took down all servers down except the admin.

- Then we removed the admin from the server group, cleared ranking form entries and started it as individual server.

- We made sure that server was working ok as an individual server (no major errors in logs, etc)

- Also cleared stuff from forms like application pending.

- Then we added this admin to the server group again and restarted to see if ranking was populated fine, components like dispatcher, approval and so on were working ok, also checking the database tables which reflect server group status/information (stuff like servgrp_board and so on).

- Once that looked fine, then we ensured all config of secondary servers was consistent across all servers (ar.cfg and so on) and gradually added the other servers to the server group, always allowing some time in between to verify if the new server was behaving properly.

- During this time, logs like servergroup logs were always enabled and quite helpful, especially during failover tests (which we executed once we had 2 servers in the server group, before adding more).